Some mornings I ignore email until my kids are in their classrooms and I have returned, coffee in hand, to sit at my laptop at the kitchen counter. Others, I am unable to keep my fingers off my phone the moment I wake. I am curious those mornings after I have published a post, and excited; I receive many emails from other parents (mostly moms and mostly supportive) who are eager to share their own stories, many who want to thank me for my honesty, and others who are seeking personalized advice. Writing for this specific audience, and being reachable via social media and e-mail, is a great responsibility; and when I fail in my own life, I fail all of us. Or so it feels.

Recently I wrote about how I became a “softer” parent because I realized how great the stakes were: my own children were modeling my harsh words and behaviors; my years of self-abuse had armed me with vicious words, unrealistic expectations; what I demanded of myself seeped into relationships with my children, and the dynamics were becoming toxic.

The response was humbling. So many asked for more details, more specifics from me. How did I use yoga? Did therapy work? Why kind of therapy? What meditation? What medications? Please, could you write back? I began several emails and stopped. I wanted to take time to answer questions with thought and accuracy. But there was a weakness when I started to write, a vague tug of something that had been left unsaid.

Right after that post was published, my husband left on a two-week business trip; New York City had a bad snow storm; then my son was sick with asthma complications for days; several of us got pink eye.

During that time, it seems I was not so soft. I was pissed. There was no time for me to work, or no energy when there was time. I wanted the peace of bad television and self-pity. I felt trapped, irrationally, but there you have it. And I fell quickly into the decades-old habit of blaming myself for my feelings.

Not only was I letting my family down, now there were scores of readers, I imagined, waiting for me to respond to their sincere inquiries. Their emails and comments had meant so much but what could I say? In theory, I know what to do. But when things get tough, like when my husband goes away, I revert to all my old ways…

I tried to write through my self-doubts but nothing gelled. So I silenced the keyboard for a few weeks and doubled down on yoga and exercise to silence the voices in my head. I sought inspiration in simple meditation apps on the iPhone. And I found wine still helped.

And then as the snowy New York days cocooned us, life nudged me toward a hard truth. Just as I had been writing about healing. Just as I had said humility was so crucial in the process of becoming a different kind of parent: one who pauses, one in whom mercy has been introduced and nurtured. It struck just as I had questioned whether I could really feel softness for myself again, but not in any way I expected.

I exploded in anger one night at my oldest when she wrote on a new leather chair. I demanded she tell me just who she thought she was destroying this new chair! I put her to bed promising she would be grounded for what she had done, amid very familiar parenting guilt and vaguely familiar shame from all my own past mistakes.

I sat grimly for hours after she went to bed. I wished I’d been different with her. But more, I felt knocked over, knocked off a perch to which I had been clinging with ferocious fear. I didn’t want to fail at this. When she woke in the night for water, I walked her back to her room. “You know I will not stop loving you no matter what you do. It’s just a chair.”

I repeated myself in the morning.

“Yes, I know, mommy. You told me. It’s okay. Really.”

Forgiveness was the only option. It always is. I had already forgiven her. It is just a chair.

Returning to my readers, I wish this were a process of steady trajectory. For my sake but more for theirs. I wish it were an easier story to tell. At the same time, however, I know that I am not a simple equation; my path represents parenting for many of us. When readers share their lives and brave questions with me, I often read in tears. I am reminded how much we must love the broken, the bent, the endlessly confused, the parts of us that have been shamed; I regret and then I forgive, daily. And then I am genuinely shocked when I must do it again. So arrogant are my pride and fear. Why can’t I be done with it? But we are never done; it is not when we overcome our faults that we get permission to be soft, but rather when we embrace the entire clumsy journey to get there.

Motherhood can be a lonely endeavor. However fulfilled we are with our children and jobs and families, we are often without meaningful adult conversation for hours or days at a time. The most common complaint I hear from fellow moms is how hard it is to make new and genuine friends—the ones that allow and encourage you to really open up. These moms can be hard to identify at first, but they are around. So when you start to hang around the baristas at Starbucks, asking how they really feel about the new mocha-caramel-peppermint-pumpkin latte, it’s time to work on finding new mom friends with whom you can relate, rejoice, commiserate, and be your frazzled, cranky, delightful self.

These seven tips may not be fool-proof, but at least you’ll be interacting with people who are not paid to have to talk to you. All you have to lose is a little pride and possibly a lot of bottled up confessions about this crazy thing called motherhood.

1. Determine your most important criteria for your new mom friends. Remember that nobody is perfect, so you may have to compromise. Here are my list tops: Did you see last night’s Dateline? and, Is that a bottle of wine stashed in the bottom of your stroller?

2. Approach all potential new mom friends with an intriguing opening line. I have found that “#$@% I was close to putting the kids out on the street with nothing but a bag of Oreos this morning,” weeds out the women who can’t stomach cursing or hyperbole. (This also weeds out moms who will judge your breakfast food choices.)

3. Know how to interpret responses: Is she dialing 911? Best to keep moving. Silence. Don’t give up. She may be recalling the last time she locked herself in the bathroom with a pint of mint chocolate chip. Nervous laugh. This can be a good sign. She hasn’t met anyone like you. (Just ease up now on listing all the places you’d be happy to leave your children.) *&%^ yes, me too! Congratulations, you met your soul mate.

4. Bond over clothing or accessories you have in common. “I have those SAME yoga pants,” works for me. This is similar to recognizing gang colors, I am told. (Hair scrunchies, head bands, and cardigans with pockets are also easy items to spot; you are likely wearing two of these items at any time.) Approach one potential friend at a time. In other words, separate your prey from the pack. Groups of moms are difficult to crack. Wait until one is left behind at the playground. She won’t see you coming.

5. If you are lucky enough to have a child melting down in public, gauge the reactions of the moms around you. The one extending a fist-bump is your gal.

6. Be persistent. If your first attempt leaves you disheartened, try again. Try with ten or twenty women until you find one mom who, like you, is waiting for someone to share embarrassing stories and frustrations and laughs that accompany raising little beings.

7. Give someone an opening to tell you how she dosed the kids with Benadryl after the third sleepless night. Nod if someone tells you she often pretends that tantruming child in the grocery store aisle is not hers. In the meanwhile, enjoy your status as the weird mom who makes everyone a little uncomfortable. Know that all the other moms secretly envy your courage to be honest (and probably your yoga pants).

My girls, who are five and seven, found two little books in a bookcase that I was to fill out at some point. The books are similar, each is called A Mother’s Story, and they are meant to be keepsake journals, records from one generation to the next.

Being a procrastinator, a recorder on blogs and social media now more than in journals, I’ve left those little books alone. But the girls were happy to fill in the answers themselves, and as I went through the books with their unfinished statements, clearly meant to record and save a mother’s childhood and personal thoughts for her daughter(s), I laughed and was a little surprised at the places we intersect.

(I didn’t help them with these; I suspect they did them together as only one girl knows how to read well. I have corrected the spelling to spare you the hours of effort.)

Mother: Wendy

Dauther: Ellie

My favorite outfit to wear was….

My mommy bought me a stuffed bunny and she bought me a yoga mat.

My favorite subject in school was…

Art is the best.

My very best friend was…

Santa got me a Stuff Stuffy.

The person I looked up to the most was…

Luna. [Luna is a kindergartner.]

My first job was…

My babysitter bought a toy for me.

The most important lesson I ever learned was…

I love my mom.

The best advice anyone ever gave me…

You can’t say the word Die

Some of my goals were…

Ballet.

When you were a child, a typical day was…

When my kids hit me. [That is not a typical day.]

You made me laugh when…

When I did silly dances.

You surprise me most when…

When you wear a wig.

You remind me of myself when…

I was a baby.

___

Mother: Wendy

Daughter: Molly

My earliest childhood memory is….

My sister. She was a baby. She was sitting on my lap.

The happiest time in my childhood was…

When we went to Disney World.

As a child, people would describe me as…

A beautiful girl and sunshine sun.

When I was growing up, I wanted to become a…

Police woman because so I can help the world not get hurt and in trouble.

My most mischievous moment was…

When I was born.

When I was little, I liked to spend time…

With my family.

My favorite outfit to wear was…

A shirt and shorts or leggings or jeans or pants.

My favorite subject in school was…

Art and computer and music and library and Spanish.

The person I looked up to the most was…

Caroline. [Caroline is a second grader.]

My first job was…

Table cleaner.

The most important lesson I ever learned was…

Math.

The best advice anyone ever gave me…

You should always look both sides.

Some of my goals were…

Do a good job.

What I consider romantic…

Always make friends. [She asked me what “romantic” meant. I told her it meant what you like to do.]

How our family began…

I was born in my mommy’s tummy then my brother came along then my sister came long that is why my brother is a little bigger than my sister.

Last night, I received an email, and then a note outside my apartment door. Each made me a little weepy and a whole lot grateful to know even in the ugliest moments when all the masks come off, I am not alone.

But I will back up to yesterday morning.

My son, Henry, has a double ear infection and has to take antibiotics for the next two weeks. We were on day two; the night before had been a bought of screaming, begging, threatening, promising, crying, cursing, and finally my wrestling him to the ground and squirting the chalky pineapple-ish liquid through his clenched teeth. My apartment floors, rugs, and walls are covered in hardened white spots like a post-modern painting gone wrong.

Yesterday morning’s dose was not any better. And my husband and I were trying, at the same time, to get the three kids ready for school. When I say we were a mess, I am leaving out the animal sounds, the throwing of toys, and my husband calling me “demonic.” A “mess” would have been way preferable to what we were.

Finally, bit by bit, Henry downed his tiny dosage and I wiped off all the excess from his hair, face, hands, and feet.

We grabbed backpacks, tossed shoes into the hallway, and the five of us were on our way to school.

When we got into the elevator, I pressed the button for the lobby floor, and—of course—Henry freaked out. I will never learn. Henry grabbed his glasses off his head, screamed at the top of his lungs, and snapped his frames so that one of the lenses fell to the elevator floor.

There were two other families on the elevator with us. My family already looked as if we’d traveled 48 hours without rest or water to make it onto that elevator.

I had not one thought or ounce of self control left.

“DAMMIT!” I screamed when I saw Henry had broken his glasses.

There were three children who were not mine in the elevator, along with the three that are, and two other mothers, neither of whom I know well.

I spent the day—even though that is far from the worst thing I have said in public or private in front of children—feeling ashamed. As a mother of three who spends a great deal of time alone with my children, shame, guilt, and regret are not unfamiliar to me. But it isn’t often I have to apologize to children other than my own for losing my barely-cool-to-begin-with.

When we were back in our apartment in the evening, after another dose was fought over, covering me, and finally in Henry’s stomach, I sent an email to one of the mothers. I left a note outside the other mother’s door. I apologized to both and to their children for getting upset and using that word (which is not such a big deal in my apartment obviously, but I imagine other people are teaching their kids better values) in front of their children.

The one mother emailed back to tell me not to worry about it, of course. The other left a note of understanding and empathy. Both told me I wasn’t alone.

Motherhood creates wells of vulnerability. At least it has for me. I am often not the person or mother I want to be in a given moment. Sometimes I can’t even pretend to be nice or patient or normal. There is nothing more human or merciful than to see the worst in another person and to be able to say, “You’re okay.” Even or especially when the behavior was not; I wish I hadn’t screamed in the elevator. I wish I wouldn’t yell the way I do at my kids a lot of the time. Perhaps there are things you do that you that feel horrible about, and are working to change. Maybe you are embarrassed, like me, when your mask falls off. If we can remove the shame from the behaviors we need to fix, and know that people are supporting and standing with us, it is much easier to move forward and show our faces.

I sit in the kids’ room as they sleep and I think that a bottle of pills and a glass of wine might do the trick. I have plenty of both. But the kids could find me. I could call 911, and unlock the door. Maybe they would get there in time…

Depression and addiction are terrifying, and hearing of someone’s suicide hits so many of us unwilling warriors in this battle at the bone because we know how the illnesses lie unfailingly and viciously. And the lies they tell–of our worth, our future, our failures, our past–are in our own familiar, trusted voices. Or they are the voices that have resided in our heads so long, we can’t remember when they weren’t there. They sound and feel true. We’re smart; we have no reason to disbelieve.

Just imagine the colossus of pain one would have to be in to leave his or her beloved family. We all love our families. But the lies distract us. The illnesses become stronger over time–as we begin to recognize their subtleties, they are able to morph just enough to fool us again: I thought I was doing better; I really am a horrible, despicable mother. Nothing changed. I’ll never change. I hate my life. The lies don’t announce themselves; they sneak in among our normal thoughts, among our efforts to live in the light. Why can’t I be nicer? What’s wrong with me? Nothing ever works out. They feed on the moments our defenses are weakened by an argument, or a doubt, or perhaps a day with too many clouds, or too much sunshine.

I know only from my experience, and from talking with others, that isolation is what the darkness wants. It wants to get us alone, and, worse, it tells us we want to be alone.

It is a long fight. Its brutality can be measured in years and reappearances: “Unholy ghost,/you are certain to come again,” from Having it Out with Melancholy by Jane Kenyon. If you are fighting, you are brave enough to have looked the darkness down. Do not continue to fight alone.

And many people respond to treatment. Even just enough better for just a little while has often been a victory. And then there are different treatments to try. And others still. For most people, something will work.

I have loved these lines describing a respite from depression, from Jane Kenyon, since I first read her poem twenty-something years ago:

“…and I am overcome/by ordinary contentment.//What hurt me so terribly/all my life until this moment?”

And this is why we beg our friends who are suffering, or seem to be, to get help, to confide in someone, why we push ourselves each day to do the impossible, why we write to unseen strangers–because on the other side, whether it be for a moment or a year or a decade, is the merciful promise of being washed in ordinary contentment.

I have always wanted to write a “What Not to Say” piece–“What Not to Say to Pregnant Women,” “…to New Mothers,” etc. I figured being a mother of twins was my best shot. (I’ve also drafted “10 Things You Shouldn’t Say to Fans of the Band Rush.” No one seems interested in this one.)

Who knew that my five-year-old daughter would do most of the work for me, and give me my much-needed blog post.

From her reactions this week, I’ve compiled a list of seven things one is better off not saying to a five-year-old girl. In August. In or near my apartment. You’ve been warned.

Don’t say: “Hi princess!”

Because: Mommy, everyone at camp is calling me a princess! This is the worstest day of my life. (Note: She was wearing a tiara.)

Don’t say: Song lyrics of any kind within one foot of her head.

Because: Mommy, Rider, that little boy in camp, was singing in my FACE! This is the worstest day for me.

Don’t say: “You don’t need to compare drawings with your sister’s. There is no ‘best.’ I love them both.”

Because: YOU DON’T LOVE ME ANYMORE!

Don’t say: “Where’s Ellie?”

Because: Mommy, in computers, the counselor asked ‘where’s Ellie?’ and EVERYONE TURNED AROUND TO LOOK AT ME! This is the worstest day of my life.

Don’t say: “What do you want for lunch tomorrow? Turkey?”

Because: You never listen to me! OOOOH! I can’t take this anymore.

Don’t say: “I think you’re just tired and it’s time for bed.”

Because: You are the worst mother ever and you’re never nice to me! YOU DON’T EVEN LOVE ME! This is the worstest day!

1. I have three children in camp this summer. For six weeks each. That costs one million dollars.

2. My children buy lunch every day at camp. We give each child 10 dollars in the morning. Each comes home in the afternoon with 12 to 37 cents.

3. There is a vending machine at camp that takes “I don’t know how much money,” according to my six year old.

4. We go through 15 towels a week for swimming at camp. How many towels do I own? Nine.

5. One of my children is sometimes chosen “Camper of the Day” and gets a prize for being extra nice to everyone that day. I have two other children who spend four hours trying to beat that child up and take his or her prize.

6. We have three weeks of camp left. But five weeks before school starts. That leaves a difference of three months in “I’m-bored-what-are-we-doing-today-can-we-go-someplace-fun-I-want-my-iPad” time.